No known score or parts; present in the archive only on archival recordings. See Cuid 20696, Cuid 20745, and Cuid 20749 in Archival Audiovisual Material.
From Marty Ehrlich: At some point in the mid 1970s, Hemphill was visiting Malinké Elliott, his close theatrical collaborator from BAG. They got access to a lumber industry salvage yard, called Zinneger Brothers Salvage. Oregon is a center of the lumber industry, and the salvage yard was full of old saws and picks, some of them very large—used to cut down trees before the advent of power tools.
Hemphill and Elliott were given access to this shed and lumber yard at 6:30 PM, after the work day had ended. They had brought their friend Greg Daugherty to do the recording. Greg had a good reel-to-reel machine and numerous mics, excellent equipment for the time. They went around the warehouse, found what had resonance, and hung these pieces up on the rafters of the shed. Julius, always the DIY artist, had already made mallets out of tree sticks and rubber tires.
They started recording at midnight. They recorded close to an hour of music.
Hemphill and Elliott integrated “Bells” as atmospheric music into their multi-disciplinary work, “Ralph Ellison’s Long Tongue,” and perhaps they used it in other theatre works they developed in the late 1970’s. Hemphill improvising with the tape playing during his solo concerts, using it as his rhythm section, if you will.